


Pity Me Not

by adrift_me



Category: Dishonored (Video Games)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Character Swap, Angst, Corvo is the Outsider, Fandom Trumps Hate, M/M, and the Outsider lives a very different life indeed, this fic is about thoughtfullness and styled as vignettes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-30
Updated: 2021-01-30
Packaged: 2021-03-16 19:53:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,012
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29087892
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/adrift_me/pseuds/adrift_me
Summary: This is a world where the Outsider's mantle is taken up by a man of honor and mindfulness, while a mortal Levi walks the earth as a young man with tragic past and hopeful future.
Relationships: Corvo Attano/The Outsider (Dishonored)
Kudos: 26
Collections: Fandom Trumps Hate 2020





	Pity Me Not

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Lumeha](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lumeha/gifts).



> Hello :) Thanks so much for checking my fic out! It's been a while since I last wrote corvosider, and this fic has been in works for a long time now, thanks to the shitshow that 2020 was. But here it is, a submission for Fandom Trumps Hate charity event.
> 
> I've applied this year again, by the way, so if you want to support people in need and get a fic from me, keep a look out :)
> 
> [Come chat with me on tumblr :) I also take prompts!](https://a-driftamongopenstars.tumblr.com/)
> 
> Thank you kindly to Lumeha for charity, for patience and for this very very fun prompt that I wrote for!

The steam puffs from the chimneys on the refinery’s roof, its thick white wisps clouding up Dunwall light blue sky. The day is nigh, and the bell rings to announce shift change at the oil refinery. The sun watches a myriad of workers pour from the building, for it to be filled with another crowd. Among them a young man, barely in his mid-twenties, black hair plastered to a sweaty forehead as steam dampens it.

“Hurry, the whale ain’t going to purge itself,” a foreman’s voice bellows across the factory, and Levi, as this is the young man’s name, sighs. Something flinches in his mind, annoyance at another day of his life, the same as the week before, a month, a year.

He watches a massive hook bringing a whale into the factory, and three faceless butchers getting started.

Levi looks away. If only he could leave the wretched place and forget his life in it. Instead, he focuses on the machinery that hungrily recycles the waste.

A soft sound reaches his ears, melodic and almost foreign amidst the screech and cry of machinery. No, it is soft and, Void forbid, magical.

Levi looks and searches, pushing through the waste in arm-long gloves, until he fishes out a small trinket. He has seen many of those, hand carved whale bone with bronze caps and wires. But this one is different, it sings to him, it calls for him. Wiping off the blood, he tucks the bonecharm away. For luck, he hopes.

When the night bells call for another shift change, Levi finds himself hurriedly crossing the district to his small shabby apartment. As per the triviality of his life, he wants to eat a quick dinner of fish and vegetables and fall asleep, but something distracts him.

Buzzing from the warmth of his pocket, a small bonecharm, crude yet lovingly made, symbols scratched into it. It sings, ever so quietly like a distant music, and Levi listens for a moment.

He sleeps through the night, never remembering a pair of curious black eyes that watch him from the dark.

***

When days off strike, Levi finds himself wandering away from the busier streets of lower town districts, to where the gardens are thicker and old abandoned buildings scare away the nobility and the poor alike. Of course, here and now gangs take over them, and Levi finds his way on low rooftops, hiding behind dilapidated advertisements and empty rooms. The Rat Plague, ended just a year ago, has certainly left an unpleasant scratch on the city.

But these places, as much as they scare, intrigue Levi with endless little secrets. Old journals and writings on the wall, hurriedly built shrines to a god whose name speaks blasphemy to the empire’s overseers. Levi loves finding these, and while he doesn’t believe in the Outsider and his magics, these little islands of privacy offer solitude and safety.

Levi turns around the corner, but the voices behind it make him stop in his tracks. The voices are rough and permeated with alcohol and cigars. A gang, undoubtedly, and Levi peeks around the corner to look.

“What should we do about him?” one asks, pointing at something on the ground.

“He’ll be fine. Give him a whiff of whiskey, that has him up and running any time,” the other grins, a couple of teeth missing. His eyes, tiny beady and swollen, focus away from the street and on Levi’s face. He knows better than to wait and bolts off to a nearby building, knowing the ins and outs of it by heart. Turning through an empty walkway and out onto the lower roof, feet hitting it with resounding noise, until he jumps into another wall opening, corroded away by age. Two pairs of feet follow him, but not fast enough for a sprightly young man, who finally finds himself hidden behind a wall in a tiny room, filled with remnants of an old interior.

The footsteps die down.

Here in this forgotten pocket of the past, unmarked by possessions and only defined by furniture, a structure of strange craftsmanship stands. Planks of rotten wood, wrapped in garlands of wire, pulled up carefully to form a shrine for an offering. An offering is there, too, a large rune, sitting atop, with a crude carving with a symbol Levi has never seen before.

As he approaches the rough-hewn shrine, he sits beside it.

It is a rare comfort to be so close to something so heretical, yet oddly safe. A lantern of purple and gold softly emits light against the dilapidated wall, and Levi watches the light pulse in soothing waves, so mesmerized by it and lulled, that he almost misses the moment when the shrine becomes engulfed and licked by gray flame-like smoke.

“A rare visitor of an unfaithful heart to my shrine,” a voice so deep brings Levi back to reality, and he jumps to his feet, slightly staggering from hunger.

Black eyes, so deep, from his nightmares, stare back at him.

“Outsider?” Levi manages to say, his voice too bold for what he means.

“A god feared amongst so many, yet unknown to most,” the man replies, making a slow circle around Levi. His footsteps are followed by smoking black dust, and his being has tiny sharp black rocks curling and floating and shaping in and out of existence.

And the man himself… A true being of something else. Black eyes against a hard jaw, bearded even. He has a noble demeanour about him, and a look so tired, Levi can almost relate. A tall black collar and angled jacket that barely closes on a muscled body.

“You devour me with your gaze as if you were hungry for flesh more than for food,” the Outsider says, and Levi can’t help but blush. Do gods understand flirting? Or what such words do to people? Perhaps, there is truth to the Overseers’ strictures where one must not succumb to Wanton Flesh?

“I have never met a god face to face. Why have you come?” Levi asks, turning on the spot as the Outsider continues circling him, hands behind his back.

“You are a curious one. Wandering aimlessly through life, but with such potential behind your shoulders. Why don’t we turn it around and put it to use? Why don’t you, Levi, accept my humble gift?”

Levi flinches as a cold hand that looks so warm takes his and covers it. Pain, searing pain goes through his hand, and smoke of black and blue exudes from it. As the Outsider let go, Levi stares at his hand which now carries a strange black brand.

“This is my mark. Use it at your discretion. And…” the Outsider turns and pauses at last, bowing slightly, “try not to get caught.”

And with a quiet noise of screeching metal, he disappears.

***

A new accessory becomes an everyday necessity for Levi. It is a pair of leather gloves, thin and not good enough to protect from Dunwall winter cold, but it does its purpose - hide the profane mark on Levi’s hand. It still burns and tingles, and in a fortnight he hasn’t dared try and test its power.

The mark both scares and allures him. He wonders if he were to use it, would it corrupt his nature, would it turn him into that which the overseers fear and seek out to eliminate? Levi knows that he has unintentionally joined a dangerous game of survival, but he isn’t ungrateful for a slight change in his life.

A month goes by of holding back from his curiosity. It grows stronger and hotter every day, while the city becomes a frosted kingdom, with ethereal frost patterns on the windows and snow piles around every street light.

Working in the oil refinery becomes a cruel task, and worse - a strange plague has taken the city by its throat, choking out the poor and the weak. Levi watches time and time again as his coworkers are either carried out or never return.

Somehow, he finds himself untouched by the mysterious sickness. He wonders if that is a gift from the Outsider, as many people have started assigning the sickness to his doing.

“And did you?” Levi asks once as he visits a shrine which served fate last time he came by it. The shrine remains quiet and unyielding and the cold wood of it looks too fragile to touch.

Levi sighs and pulls the glove off his pale hand. He sighs and listens to what his heart is telling him to do.

With a delicate touch against air, flames of blue lick at Levi’s palm, a glowing sphere of strange substance. He sends it flying into the air, and there it remains, a lit torch, exuding such warmth that he has never felt before.

“Learning is a part of anyone’s existence. Even mine,” a voice speaks from the darkness, and Levi looks up. He may be warmed by the gentle blue flames of the fire, but the coldness of the Outsider’s eyes plunges him in the abyss of his black eyes.

“And what have you learnt?”

“A great many things. Of the worlds that came to be and that passed on. Of the people who branded me the bringer of sickness. Of you, the scraps of your life that you carry in shattered hopes. You’ve embraced the darkness of a meek existence, but shall you continue this way, Levi?”

His name, whispered in the vicinity of the heretical shrine, makes Levi’s skin crawl. He breathes out and turns on the spot as the Outsider walks around him, carefully measuring the room with steps that never make a sound and never kiss the ground.

His ethereal smoke upholds him within the air, but even so, the Outsider is taller than Levi by a good amount. Broad, too, and handsome. Whoever he was in the life before, if there was to have one, he must have been a man of unique stand.

“And is that true? The sickness, does it come from you?” Levi asks, earnest in his plea.

“A sickness is brought upon by people only. I do not plant the seeds of such destruction, but I watch the people grow it from the darkest corners of their hearts and commitments.”

“You speak in circles, just as you walk, and it makes my head hurt,” Levi sighs, stopping. The Outsider, too, stops.

It is a quiet pause in their nimble dance, as is in their conversation. Getting a straight answer from the God of the Void seems a task too impossible, and Levi abandons it. He has many more questions, none of which the answers to might satisfy him, and he chooses to remain quiet.

Until the Outsider merges with the shadows, almost out and away.

“Wait. One question, and I shall leave you to your pacing.”

“Ask.”

“Why this?” Levi says quietly, bringing his hand up into the air. The mark of black ink burns with magical fire as he floods it with power. “Why me?”

“One question only, and one I shall answer. You are interesting. It is simple as that, sometimes,” the Outsider explains, disappearing into the dark and leaving Levi with ever more questions left unanswered.

***

Days go by, and Levi chooses to explore the strange gift he has been left with. The Void’s magic is odd to wield, as it is to discover. Levi follows his instincts, follows the moonlight as he creeps above the rooftops, tasting magic more and more with every new day. He learns to jump gaps between the rooftops as easily as a bird would, he brings warm fire to the room he lives in. Darker desires live in his heart now, too, and sometimes he wonders if he may yet use the gift of the Outsider for something more meaningful.

He learns to sing with magic, and he soothes dying whales to their eternal sleep with their own song.

And something else begins. Dreams, too real, too odd, that the Outsider visits him in. Sometimes they talk, of everything and nothing, but more often the Outsider listens in patience as Levi rants. The things he tells him are silly and quiet and passionate, desires and fears and wishes. The Void God is a strange kind of catharsis, a reprieve that Levi turns to in his hour of need.

And the need grows. With the city falling to the disease, faster than a star crosses the sky, the world changes. Gates close and soon the refinery, too, dwindles in its business and its people. Levi is not let go, and as death collects its toll, he begins working harder, for two, for three. If sickness does not take him, exhaustion surely might.

Were it not for the Outsider’s mark, he may have already fallen as many of his co-sufferers.

But Levi endures.

***

“You never speak plainly, yet I begin to understand you,” Levi says one time as he and the Outsider share a balcony, overlooking the broken cliff above the Void. Here there are no people, only whales that roam and wander their realm and drink of the Void and its dreams.

“Speaking is not a thing I take pleasure in. Seeing is a more preferable venture, as is listening. One must learn to listen to understand the way the universe works.”

“Then, you are a good listener. I…” Levi hesitates. A question bites on the tip of his tongue. “Have you always been like this?”

“There was a life, once. In another’s dreams and another’s story. That man is no more.”

“So you  _ were  _ a man of a kind,” Levi smiles. The Outsider bestows no answer for him.

***

The plague soon takes a clearer shape, rats are hunted down and the Abbey becomes a force it has always intended to be. Raids on neighbourhoods, prosecutions of any civilian that moved wrong, elimination of bonecharms.

For Levi life becomes both miserable and exciting all at once. Where he used to shy away from dangerous alleys and dark corners, he now relishes the comfort they provide. Blending in with shadows through the Outsider’s powers allows him to slip in and out unnoticed, and that is what he needs.

The mark on his hand is a death sentence, one that would not call for forgiveness or understanding of a sharp blade.

In a way, it is liberating.

He does not tell the Outsider of his fears. When they talk, which is still a rare occasion, they speak of mysteries, of what the world has to offer even in its darkest hour. And sometimes they speak not at all, which suits them both perfectly.

Levi finds himself surprised that he looks forward to every occasional meeting they stumble into. Never religious, even less so - heretical, and much more - independent, Levi never thought that a god’s company would take up his thoughts. From the flutter of his heart in a bony ribcage to the excitement that courses through his veins, he finds little explanation for such an interest. Perhaps, he has been lonely for far too long and now craves understanding and company.

But he cannot deny that he is a fool and that part of that heart flutter makes him wish for other things he never had before.

A wish is simple.

A kiss.

Levi blushes at his thoughts, looking back in a speckled mirror. His reflection within the faded surface is not the finest look, and surely the Outsider would have even less interest in looking at him this way. But the idea’s seed has planted itself firmly into Levi’s imagination, and he cannot stop thinking of it, not for a night, nor for a day.

Is it silly to care for a god? In a way that would have Levi executed faster than a gasp of breath when lips part. In a way that heretics dream, in a way that no one should dream, perhaps.

And the next time he and the Outsider meet in the darkness of night, beside a time-torn shrine, Levi finds trouble meeting the god’s eyes.

The Outsider does not question him. And Levi can’t guess if he knows.

***

A nightmare does come true. His glove must have slipped or someone’s sharp eye noticed the mark of the Outsider on Levi’s hand, but now the refinery is shut down and the Overseers are scouring its premises like hungry hounds in search of prey.

Levi laughs to himself, quietly. They are looking for a needle in the hay, a man’s simple abilities against what a god’s power has to offer. He tries not to get cocky, and instead focuses on getting out of here as soon as possible.

Somehow he knows that he will never again step foot in the refinery, leaving this part of his life behind to the bitter memory. 

In the few days of respite that he spends at his tiny home, Levi ponders. He has no interest in travel, and yet Dunwall has become a city so toxic, it rots his soul. Soon even here he won’t have the peace and quiet he so desperately needs, and Levi looks to what exits he may find.

The answer comes in a surprising shape as his footsteps not on the cobblestone of a foggy street, but onto the grassy patch on a floating rock within the Outsider’s Void.

The Outsider stands tall, his back turned to Levi. His hands are clasped behind. Black fog licks at his floating figure, and it is as if reality itself rejects the Outsider’s being, painting him in strange muted colors. Levi watches, mesmerized for a moment, and then steps closer to the god of the void.

“You rarely pull me into the Void. In fact, not ever.”

“Call it a gesture of good will. The Overseers were setting a trap around the corner, and you were most gullibly walking into it.”

“But there were no street turns where I walked.”

“It is because I do not speak of the street,” the Outsider replies, turning on his heels in the air to look at Levi. “Caution is a virtue and it extends life most efficiently. A hard lesson for all to learn but a necessary one.”

“I guessed that this lesson you have failed,” Levi says quietly, not with bitterness but with pity.

“Pity or mourn me not, Levi,” the Outsider says, black eyes blinking in the purple light. “But learn from mistakes of another.”

Levi sighs, but nods in agreement. He stands beside the Outsider, leaning onto a half broken half-wall, looking down at the great expanse of the Void.

“What other lessons can you teach me?”

“It is not my purpose.”

“And what is it?”

“It is difficult to provide answers for a question so broad. It is possible, I don’t have the answers or mine are wrong.”

“There, you speak in riddles again,” Levi says, and a smile touches his lips, a mischief. The Outsider shakes his head in dismay.

Levi, inspired by laughter, thinks of another lesson.

He steps closer to the Outsider, and looks up in his eyes. Such blackness meets his gaze, and he stutters for a moment, as if losing grip on reality. Should he do such a reckless, bold move?

Oh he wants to.

Without thinking more, he leans forward, and his lips kiss the Outsider’s lips, and his breath turns icy cold as he tastes the ocean, and his eyes never do close as the Outsider stares back at him, emotionless.

But what a thrill it is when the Outsider’s lips move against his, and Levi savours the kiss in a most sinful manner. 

A moment passes, and Levi is no longer sure who teaches who the lesson. He kisses the God, yet finds it necessary to wrap his arms around the Outsider’s strong physique. When the answering embrace does not follow, he takes the Outsider’s hands blindly and guides them to his waist.

Eternity passes, or so it feels. Surely, the Dunwall night lights have lit up the empty streets by now and people may have died and some other things may have happened, but Levi is here, in this instant.

When he pulls back, it is to nearly faint from excitement, from the roused blood in his body that sears hot in his cheeks and lips.

“You are a curious one,” the Outsider says, and to Levi’s pleasure of looking, he licks at his lips. And he be damned if he didn’t just see the god’s mouth stretch in a pleased little smile.

***

It is, perhaps, an expected side-effect of having such powers that the Outsider has gifted him, that Levi were to stumble onto a conspiracy. A single roof walk under a cool light of the moon has led him to a most heinous conversation held between a man named Burrows and his confidant, High Overseer Campbell. The two men, entrusted with protecting the Empire, have driven it into its darkest age.

Burrows speaks of gut-eating diseases that the rats carry and how it is not a curse, but a cleansing wave to keep “esteemed population” above the less fortunate masses.

Campbell agrees, as surely to be poor, you must be turning to heretical powers and thus condemning a life of a reverent Everyman.

Levi hears, and his throat hurts and burns, and he throws up whatever has churned in his stomach with disgust of these people.

Hundreds of victims, a world collapsing on its own, all a plan of a handful of people who decided what is good and what isn’t for the world. Levi wonders how it has gone past the Empress’ back, and that is one of the reasons he finds a new purpose.

In the end, at a subtle approval of the Outsider and of his own volition, Levi steps onto a dangerous path where rooftops become as familiar as the ground streets of Dunwall. He learns to run faster and to jump gaps, he blends with shadows as he infiltrates houses to steal all the information he may. He acquires a dagger, too, fit and attached to his hip.

Names on his tongue are familiar, taken from newspapers, from the refinery coworkers and more.

Like a strand of wool, turned into a ball by a playful cat, Levi unwraps and unravels it, pulling at the knots of mystery and conspiracy, seeking out every person with blood on hands one by one. Destruction step by step would be too gentle a punishment, so he collects information and builds a revelation and an ending so grand, he often feels faint from the size of it.

As it all crashes together, akin to a powerful wave that washes the cities off the shores and out of history, Levi watches, almost emotionless, but with anger burning in his heart.

High Oveseer. Branded heretic, as was meant to be. Conspirators who spread the plague nearly by hand, contaminating rivers of the lesser neighbourhoods of the city. The rich, the powerful, the blinded by their own meaninglessness, all of them Levi scythes with cold justice.

And the last, the crown of the despicable plot, awaits the Spymaster.

Oh is it not a curse and a blessing to be found within the history’s making? A turning tide has swept Levi into its cruel embrace, and where he used to deliver the whales from their suffering, he now follows a path of the ruse of a century. The Empress’ own Spymaster in the heart of a terrible revelation, the true nature of the plague and the blood of innocent thousands on his hands. And it is Levi’s timeline and his own path that leads him straight to that.

He killed whales. Not a single human life was taken by his hand, and he wouldn’t let that happen now, either. Instead, he would deliver him to justice as he did the whales.

A nobody to others and a whole world to one god, Levi stands in front of the Empress, her eyes cleverly looking around him. Behind her, a daughter, not even ten years old yet, clutching at her Mother’s side.

“You will not go by without a reward,” the Empress says, sitting down on the throne carefully, clasping hands in her lap.

“I do not have any grand requests,” Levi says, a smile tugging at the corner of his mouth.

“What about a tame one, then?”

“Perhaps, one.”

“Then ask.”

“Shut down the oil refinery I worked at. It needs no more suffering and no more blood.”

The Empress looks at him, and Levi wonders if, perhaps, his request has indeed sounded grand. It would be asking to cut off a part of the economy, its tiniest little branch, but still tangible.

“I think that offer can be granted, Levi.”

“Thank you, your Imperial Majesty,” he bows. As he rises, a curious thing does catch his attention. Could it truly be a sharp sword of black ink on the Empress’ hand, hiding behind the lacey glove?

***

Another night in Levi’s apartment. But a room to his space and a tiny kitchen. The lights are turned off and the windows are closed and the air is still, but for the hot breath of two vividly different creatures.

Levi rests on his back on his cot, pressed close to the Outsider, whose gaze betrays so much curiosity, that he has never seen before. The Outsider’s fingertips are oddly calloused, and as they trace down Levi’s bare chest, he feels it with utmost excitement.

He turns on his side, pressing to the God’s chest. Never did he think he would put those words together, that he would touch the Outsider as another human being. It is different, certainly, and yet, humane.

Levi’s own fingertips, soft and delicate, caress the God’s skin.

It is their language invented anew, and Levi relishes it. Words are not necessary where he wishes to express gratitude. His lips can do enough. What is a syllable, when a well-placed touch can deliver the same message, if not better?

Could there be an easier union than between two people who so deeply dislike to talk?

Levi closes his eyes. Any time he and the Outsider share the bed, he is hit with a realization of what happened. One time, two times, he has certainly lost count by now, but it feels as if he commits something both wonderful and terrible. But his body and soul’s yearning drowns out any doubts, and so he indulges in another kiss.

What would he give to learn what thoughts course through the Outsider’s mind, for surely that stream of consciousness is even less cohesive than the mess in Levi’s head?

***

It takes months for the plague to ebb away. But the city seems to be cleansing itself, not just from evil, but from the physical sickness it endured. Streets are cleaner and people are happier.

The Abbey of the Everyman remains strong, and its new leader takes the course of their faith into another direction. Raids stop and so do the endless executions. It will never wash the blood off their hands, and the Outsider’s mark will forever be a target on any owner’s forehead, but for the time being Levi feels safe enough to not flinch away from every little noise for the fear of being discovered.

As promised, the refinery is indeed shut down, although much to Levi’s displeasure, the owner has been paid a hefty sum to make that happen. But he won’t complain, watching the refinery from afar as its gates are shut for one last time.

A sense of freedom washes over him as he watches from the tall rooftop. The mark on his hand burns with magic, calling for him to taste it again, and he breaks into a run across the buildings, letting the wind whip his face with its frosty gusts. Winter is tiptoeing towards Gristol, and Levi is almost happy about it.

The twenty five winters to his age, he has never quite enjoyed the season. Cold and slippery and unpleasant, it often threw him into depressive cycles. Prone to fatal accidents, cold weather did not help a young mind’s hopelessness.

It is different now. A hope warms his heart and his marked hand, and even more so, a hopeful feeling still blossoms in his heart as he and the Outsider continue sharing nights, days, thoughts and countless kisses. He almost feels as if the Outsider himself has taken after his nature, falling for being a little more human than it seems.

“Outsider?” Levi asks, as they reside not in his home, but within the strange islands of the Void, in a pocket of reality that nothing can reach.

“Yes, Levi?”

The sound of his name sends shivers down his spine. The Outsider does not often bestow words upon him, much less his name, and Levi savours every occurrence.

“I wanted to share a request.”

“Then do.”

Levi exhales. He has thought of it for a while, and as directionless as he may feel, the Outsider has become an anchor. With the power that Levi still uses, has grown affectionate for, it is now a necessary part of his life.

He wonders if this is also a conclusion of its own, to fall in love with the god so desperately, so deeply and so daringly, that a choice of another partner is simply non-existent.

“As I move forward, perhaps, you will see yourself moving forward by my side?”

A strange proposition, even Levi himself feels that now. But expects an answer nonetheless.

“Mine is not a direction of forward, Levi,” the Outsider says, and continues, “but yours is. And as much as my nature allows me… I would hope it drives me alongside your life.”

This is, perhaps, the most pleasant thing Levi has ever heard coming off of the Outsider’s lips.

The sun rises to a zenith, and Levi watches into the distant blue horizon. Today, he decides, is not a life changing decisions. But a simple kiss from his lover god will do.


End file.
